Bread and Cheese

A Christmas Story for the young at heart: Part 2/5

Sniff. Sniff.  Sundelli-53 sniffed the air.  His sharp nose caught the distinct smell of warm cheese and bread that wafted through the air.

Sundelli was tired and hungry. His brown furry body had become a darker shade of brown because he had climbed drainage pipes and waded in dirty water. The food that he carried was long gone. A little bird stole it. 

It was close to midnight when he entered a city. The night was dark except for a few stars that twinkled far away in the sky. The town was silent. Everyone was asleep.

As he passed an old house, he muttered to himself, “Not here”. 

Sundelli kept moving forward, sniffing the air as he went.  The smell of cheese and bread grew stronger and stronger.  He now began running as fast as his little legs could take him.  But what slowed him down was the diary he tugged along.  He could not leave his diary behind because he carried his past – the mistakes he made and a few kind deeds sprinkled here and there.    

“Here, it is!”, he exclaimed.  He finally found the house where the fragrant smell of warm cheese and bread originated. 

He crept through the house’s tiny crevice, ensuring he did not damage his diary. After pushing and pulling, he entered a dimly lit room.

Peering through the room, he noticed a simply furnished room. A small table and a few chairs were in the middle of the room. But what caught his eye was the glimpse of a pretty young woman walking towards the table to light a lamp on the lampstand. 

“She seems to be friendly”, he thought to himself. 

Trying to avoid the woman’s attention, he crept slowly against the wall, making his way towards the cheese and bread. I think the noise of the diary being dragged along caught the young girl’s attention. She turned around. Sundelli gasped. He turned to run, for he knew what would usually happen. But at the corner of his eye, he noticed that the woman was amused. She smiled at him. But before she could respond, suddenly, there was a bright light that filled the room. From the light, Sundelli heard a loud voice. 

The woman was petrified, but the voice calmed her down. After a few exchanges between the voice and the woman, the light suddenly disappeared.  

Afterwards, the woman began to hum a song.  He strained his pointed ears and managed to catch a few words and thought he should write them in his diary.

Just as he was thinking about it, the woman turned towards him and smiled. She looked different now. It seemed like some of the light dust was upon her.

The woman went to the table, picked up a piece of the cheese and bread, bent down on her knees, and placed the food on a bottle cap for hungry Sundelli. She patted him on his forehead, although it was dirty with mud. She went back to her chores, humming the song. 

Sundelli thought to himself, “No one has loved me like this before”.

He gobbled the cheese and bread as fast as his little mouth could eat. He grabbed his diary and began to leave, but he remembered to write in his journal before he did.

He wrote:  The Light loves everyone.  It loves the rich and the poor. He drew a little heart next to it.

Sundelli closed his diary.  He ran back to the crevice, pushing himself through it and tugging his journal until he came outside.

He felt unusually happy.  He began to skip as he walked, humming the woman’s tune until he slowly disappeared into the night. 

Follow his trail.  Read his upcoming adventure, next week.

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